Coretta King - A Tribute to the Keeper of A Dreamer

Civil movement leader of USA Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wife Mrs. Coretta King died yesderday in a Mexico clinic at the age of 78. She was suffering from cancer for a long time. She was more than jsut a wife of a great leader of civil rights movements.
Follwing excerpt from a local newspaper (www.ajc.com) reads:
It would have been easy to label Coretta Scott King just a wife, but it would have missed the mark.
Before she married the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Alabama-born Coretta Scott had established herself as politically and socially conscious young woman. Formally educated in Ohio and Boston, she was an anti-war activist who rallied fellow students against violence and was a delegate to a political convention. She was an accomplished classical singer.

During the civil rights movement, she marched alongside her husband and sang to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization he co-founded.
After her husband's death in 1968, Coretta King emerged as an important activist in her own right. She founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and led the fight to make her husband's birthday a national holiday. Yet she also was known as a loving mother who reared four children alone. She instilled in them a reverence for the ideals their father espoused, as well as an independence to chart their own courses, even if it challenged long-standing ideals of who or what they should be.
She became an international advocate for peace and human rights. She met with presidents and world leaders and was arrested fighting against apartheid. And well into her 70s, she traveled the globe to speak against racial and economic injustice, promote the rights of the powerless and poor, and advocate religious freedom, full employment, health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and AIDS awareness.
Coretta Scott King, 78, of Atlanta, died late Monday at a holistic hospital in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, about 17 miles south of San Diego, family members said. Willie A. Watkins Funeral Home on Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard is in charge of arrangements, which at this point are incomplete.
"Mrs. King's lasting contributions to freedom and equality have made America a better and more compassionate nation," President Bush said Tuesday in a prepared statement. "Laura and I were fortunate to have known Mrs. King, and we will always treasure the time we spent with her. We send our condolences and prayers to the entire King family."
Mrs. King suffered a debilitating stroke and heart attack in August.
Despite her physical struggles — friends and family members said her last days were painful — she made a surprise appearance last month during the King Center's annual Salute to Greatness awards dinner in downtown Atlanta.
She was wheeled into the ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, triggering a standing ovation. She smiled, waved and kissed family members, but she did not speak.
It would be her last public appearance.
For many, Coretta King was the closest thing possible to African-American royalty, from the regal way she carried herself to how others perceived her. Her image froze in the public's consciousness thanks to a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken at her husband's funeral. Beneath her black veil, she seemed dignified and stoic even as she consoled her grief-stricken 5-year-old daughter, Bernice.

On Dec. 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. At 26, the movement chose Martin Luther King Jr. as its leader.
Coretta King has said it was an exciting time for the young couple because they were leading a life of purpose.
On the evening of Jan. 30, 1956, while Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking at Ralph David Abernathy's First Baptist Church, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the family home in Montgomery.
In her autobiography, Coretta King wrote that she was sitting in her house with a friend and daughter Yolanda when they heard a loud thump on the porch. She had been anticipating an attack and tried to run to the back of the house.
"We moved fast—not through the hall, which would have taken us near the sound, but straight back through the guest bedroom," she wrote. "We were in the middle of it when there was a thunderous blast. Then smoke and the sound of breaking glass."
She, the friend and baby Yolanda narrowly escaped injury.
"I think Coretta Scott King is the quintessential woman that has been far underrated in terms of her contributions," the Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday. "People talk about Dr. King, but it was Dr. King and Coretta King. When they bombed the house it was Coretta's house. She was home. He wasn't even there."
On a personal note, I would like to add that, what Mrs. Gandhi did to carry forward Mr. Gandhi's dream in the Indian context, Mrs. Coretta King probably did even more to carry forward the dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King in the United States' perspectives. May her soul rest in eternal peace.